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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27848110">Sensory Deprivation</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/justanotherStonyfan/pseuds/justanotherStonyfan'>justanotherStonyfan</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Hydra Trash Meme 2014 ongoing - blanket dub/non consent warnings [14]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Captain America (Movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Bucky Barnes Recovering, HYDRA Trash Party adjacent, M/M, Restraints, Sensory Deprivation, soft dom steve rogers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 21:54:29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,395</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27848110</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/justanotherStonyfan/pseuds/justanotherStonyfan</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The Winter Soldier only ever felt safe when he knew he couldn't do the wrong thing and be punished, and only ever felt focused when the world wasn't overwhelming. Now that he's James Barnes again, he still needs those assurances sometimes, and Steve is willing to help him get them.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Hydra Trash Meme 2014 ongoing - blanket dub/non consent warnings [14]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/116107</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>82</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Sensory Deprivation</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheAwfulDodger/gifts">TheAwfulDodger</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for TheAwfulDodger.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Really it should be dangerous. It should have been <i>the most dangerous thing he’s ever done,</i> but Steve has two middle names, not including his confirmation name (Joseph, if anyone asks, but even if they do it’s a secret Bucky’s going to take to his grave, fuck the Smithsonian, fuck the historians) and, while the first of these is ‘Grant,’ the second is ‘total-lack-of-self-preservation,’ so the second he comes up behind Bucky and covers his eyes and says “guess who” it’s a surprise to both of them what happens.</p><p>Because Bucky would have said, if anyone asked, that trying that shit might get you stabbed (where ‘might’ translates to ‘would definitely’). In fact, if it had been anyone else, they’d be chock full of holes by the time they got to “Gue—”  </p><p>But Steve’s not anybody else, and the Winter Soldier does the type of funny things around Steve that he never would for anybody else.</p><p>This time, it would seem, the Winter Soldier just….leaves. </p><p>Steve hates it immediately, Bucky knows.</p><p>“Jesus!” he hisses, and pulls his hands back like he’s been burned. “Bucky!”</p><p>And his voice is soft but urgent, his anxiety clear in his voice. It’s a shame he moves, actually, Bucky had forgotten all about it until Steve did it and now it’s all gone away again.</p><p>“Are you okay?” he’s saying, coming around Bucky to look at him. “Bucky say something.”</p><p>“It’s me,” he says, but he finds that his shoulders stay down, his smile doesn’t fade. “Hiya, Steve, you’re alright, it’s me.”</p><p>Steve’s brow is furrowed and his hands are on Bucky’s shoulders, and he searches Bucky’s face as though he isn’t sure. </p><p>“You went completely,” he says, “I am <i>so sorry.”</i> </p><p>But that’s not true. They’ve had occasions like it, where Bucky really <i>has</i> gone completely, waking hours later to find that he’s missed time, or finding himself in the kitchen with a weapon when he had no idea he’d left the bedroom. It’s one of the reasons they live where they live, one of the reasons he lives with Steve - if something happens and they need him taken down, Steve’s pretty much the only man who can do it. He’s also one of the few people who’ll do it and try to take him alive, rather than a hell of a lot of other people who want him dead, but that was more of a deciding factor for Steve than for Bucky. </p><p>“It’s alright,” he says again, because it is. “I didn’t go anywhere, that’s not…”</p><p>But Steve isn’t smiling. Steve doesn’t look happy or look like he’s floating on clouds or whatever feeling Bucky has right now. Steve looks like somebody kicked him in the shins and told him he didn’t get ice cream or something. </p><p>“What happened?” he says.</p><p>But Bucky shakes his head. If he says so, Steve will be upset. Steve’s always upset about things like this. If he doesn’t say anything, Steve will be upset too. He just has to figure out which is the lesser of these particular two evils.</p><p>“Hydra used to do that to me,” he says, and Steve goes white.</p><p>“Bucky,” he murmurs, but Bucky shakes his head.</p><p>“No, listen,” he says, and his lifts his hands to Steve’s arms, “I don’t mean it like that. It’s a good thing, okay? They did all kinds of things to me but the dark was safe. It’s really weird - sometimes they’d give me a hood, one STRIKE guy once gave me a bucket. But it was…if I got punished, it was where I could see. Where everybody else could see, otherwise what was the point, you know? But if it was dark I was safe. I could rest.” He shrugs, tries to smile despite the look on Steve’s face. “I guess it just…stuck. You know?” </p><p>He remembers reading his own files after Insight and triggering the memories of being fitted for tac-gear - how much easier it was to focus once he had the straps across his chest, how much faster he could level out his breathing. He didn’t know which of them had figured it out - likely they would have been retired or dead the next time he’d been brought out of cryo anyhow - but he remembers the questions, the confused faces, when out of nowhere somebody handed him something new to wear, and the new and sudden feeling of focus that came with gear. With his hair longer, there wasn’t so much air on the back of his neck, wasn’t so much noise in his ears, and without the stench of the world around him, with less light to get in his eyes, all he had to do was breathe, and wait, and squeeze the trigger. And then he could rest.</p><p>It’s a lot more than being focused and safe and resting, of course, but Bucky likes to keep Steve safe from that kind of stuff if he can. </p><p>Steve nods slowly and looks away. Then he shakes his head. Then he bites his lip and nods again.</p><p>“Okay,” he says. “Okay, Buck.”</p><p>~</p><p>Steve comes to him two days later with a scarf in his hands. </p><p>“We have to start slow,” he says. “We have <i>got</i> to start <i>slow.</i> Because, Buck, if this goes wrong-”</p><p>“It’s okay,” Bucky says. </p><p>He doesn’t know what the scarf is for, but he knows Steve. He knows Steve better than he knows himself, and Steve knows him just as well.</p><p>“We’ll go slow,” he says. </p><p>“Good,” Steve answers. “That’s the best way to get it right. You know? I want to get this right for you.”</p><p>The scarf Steve has, it’s a gift from someone, very soft and easy to tear if he needed to tear it. He won’t, he knows that somewhere deep in the middle of himself. Steve will do this and then the world will just go away and that’s what he wants more than anything, that tranquility, that lack of sensation, the loss of reality around him, especially if Steve’s in charge. Steve won’t let anything happen to him, won’t let anything bad in, including sounds and sights and smells. Maybe next time he’ll ask Steve to take a shower without soap, really wipe his slates clean.</p><p>He sits on the bed with his back to Steve, because sitting on the bed with his back to Steve is something he can do these days without freaking out, and Steve barely ties the scarf over his eyes.</p><p>“Like that?” he asks, and Bucky nods. </p><p>“Like that,” he says, and then he listens, he breathes.</p><p>They’re supersoldiers, both of them. Their senses scream at them day and night and they learned to deal with new baselines, to live with the world the way they experienced it. But it’s always been easier for Bucky, since Azzano, like this. </p><p>He can hear traffic. He can hear the hum of the air-con and the buzz of the wiring in the walls. He can hear the drone of the refrigerator and the ticking of the clock but, more than anything, he hears himself and he hears Steve. His own heart thumping slowly in his chest, Steve’s going much faster in his. Bucky keeps his breathing even and Steve does his best to do the same, but it’s hard for him, Bucky knows that.</p><p>“How you doing?” he says, and Steve startles, Bucky hears the shift of skin and fabric. </p><p>“Uh,” he says. “I’m okay, what about you?” </p><p>And Bucky just breathes deeply and breathes out slowly. </p><p>“I’m good,” he says softly. </p><p>“Good,” Steve answers, and Bucky tries not to smile lest Steve think he’s being laughed at.</p><p>After five minutes, Bucky can hear how agitated Steve is.</p><p>“Okay,” he says, “you can take it off.”</p><p>Steve does, carefully and gently, and then leans around him to make sure he’s okay, to get a good look at Bucky’s face. Bucky could have taken it off himself, but he wanted Steve to do it. </p><p>“Uh was it,” Steve says. “Was that alright?”</p><p>Bucky smiles at him.</p><p>“Yeah,” he says softly. “It really was. Maybe next time we can go for longer.”</p><p>Steve sets his jaw, and Bucky fights the urge to smile. </p><p>Alright, now Steve gets it. Now Steve knows the way ahead.</p><p>~</p><p>“So it’s like,” Steve says, “what, you don’t have to think?”</p><p>“Sorta,” Bucky nods. “Yeah. I don’t have to make any calculations, I don’t have to come up with any excuses. Can’t get any questions wrong if nobody’s askin’ em, can’t say the wrong thing if they’re letting me be quiet. The whole world goes away, you know? You know what it’s like - everything’s too bright and smells too much and sounds too loud and… The dark is better.”</p><p>Pierce had liked to do the opposite, Bucky realizes, but that would be a terrible thing to say to Steve at a moment like this, a terrible thing to divulge. Pierce liked to trick him into the wrong answer and punish him for it. Steve will search for the right thing to do every minute of every day.</p><p>“Do you think,” Steve says one afternoon, and then sits in silence for a while. “I heard about a thing. Like a weight blanket.”</p><p>Bucky nods.</p><p>“Yeah,” he says. “I used to have one of those too - sometimes they’d let me have restraints.”</p><p>“Let you ha-” Steve says, and then rubs his mouth with his hand. “And you wanted that?”</p><p>Bucky laughs at him.</p><p>“Steve, what are you askin’ me, pal? It was the best part of my day, it wasn’t <i>good.</i> But you, with you, I bet it could be.”</p><p>Steve scrapes his teeth over his lower lip a few times. </p><p>“Mm,” he says. “Mm.”</p><p>~</p><p>“Does it help if,” Steve says quietly as he pulls the covers up over them both in the bed. “I mean, would you like me to hold onto you? I’m kind of strong and I can…uh...”</p><p>“If you’d be okay with it,” Bucky tells him.</p><p>“What do you want me to do?” Steve asks, and Bucky turns onto his back to look at him.</p><p>“You could hold me down?” he says. “They had a blanket with weights sewn into it that they’d put on me. It took a couple of guys to lift so…” Bucky wets his lips.  “So if they put it on me, I knew I was safe.”</p><p>Steve nods slowly, and then a little more quickly.</p><p>“Yeah,” he says. “I-I can do that, do you want to…”</p><p>“On my stomach,” Bucky tells him, and starts to turn over again.</p><p>Steve sits up next to him while he moves, and then pulls back the covers. It’s colder without them and Bucky waits for a moment in silence. </p><p>“Back to back or…front to back?” Steve says, and Bucky settles his head on his pillow, arms folded underneath. </p><p>“You can lay down however you want,” he says, “but we’ll fit better front to back.”</p><p>“Right,” Steve says. “Sure.” </p><p>Sure is the last thing Steve sounds. </p><p>He  eases himself over Bucky, moving the covers around them so he doesn’t trap any between them, and gets one arm either side of Bucky’s shoulders, like a press-up. He lowers himself slowly, his chest to Bucky’s shoulderblades, his stomach to the small of Bucky’s back, groin to ass, knees to the backs of Bucky’s.</p><p>“Uh,” he says, and settles and…</p><p>Bucky feels like he could dissolve into the mattress. He feels like he could be spread out like melting butter. </p><p>“Okay?” Steve says, and Steve’s full weight is a lot, so answering isn’t easy.</p><p>“Yeah,” Bucky says, and his voice sounds strained to his own ears, but the pressure on his chest is enough to make him lightheaded.</p><p>He can breathe (almost) just fine. He gets the best night’s sleep he’s had since he’s been back.</p><p>~</p><p>Steve is on his laptop at the dining table, and he’s frowning.</p><p>“Wind’ll change and you’ll stick that way,” Bucky tells him.</p><p>“You know how you said about the overload,” Steve says, half mumbled because he’s still in his own little world over there. </p><p>“Yeah?” Bucky says, and he comes over to see what Steve’s shopping for. </p><p>Steve isn’t shopping for anything - he’s reading psychology articles and DIY blogs. He looks up at Bucky.</p><p>“How far do you want to go?” </p><p>~</p><p>“I bought earplugs,” Steve says, and puts down the plastic carrier bag on the table. “I bought different ones, I don’t know what you like.”</p><p>“We’ll try them all,” Bucky tells him. “You’re gonna be right here, right?” </p><p>“Yeah,” Steve answers, as though Bucky’s just asked him whether the sky is blue.</p><p>Still, there’s more chance of the sky turning green than of Steve leaving him, so he might as well have.</p><p>“Then do you wanna start now?”</p><p>Steve looks at him and scrapes his teeth over his lower lip.</p><p>“Sure,” he says. </p><p>~</p><p>When Steve comes home with ropes, Bucky knows they’ll be okay. </p><p>They’re colored like a rainbow - specially dyed, Steve tells him, to order. It’s cotton, so it’s soft, so it won’t scratch up his skin, because Steve’s learning. Sometimes, Steve tells him, the people on these forums (he’s read forums) or in the videos (he’s watched videos) get off on pain. Steve’s a little bit like that, he doesn’t mind being bitten, sometimes, or pinched maybe, in certain places. Bucky doesn’t do much of it any more but sometimes they fool around. But he says, that’s not what Bucky wants. </p><p>“Is it?” he asks, cautious, but Bucky shakes his head and Steve’s shoulders drop again. “Right,” he says. “So I bought you this stuff.”</p><p>And he learns fast. He always did, mind you, but even more so now with the serum. He learns how to tie Bucky’s wrists behind his back, and how to make sure his upper arms are tight to his body, and they do it on the bed so that Bucky can’t fall and hurt himself. </p><p>“I could draw you like this,” Steve says, more to himself, one afternoon, and Bucky finds that he feels alright about it.</p><p>“If you wanted to,” he says, because he has on a blindfold but isn’t wearing his earplugs yet. “You could.”</p><p>Steve seems surprised by that, and blushes about it too.</p><p>“Really?” he says. “You wouldn’t mind?” </p><p>Bucky shakes his head.</p><p>“I wouldn’t mind. You like me like this, huh?”</p><p>Steve frowns, rolls one shoulder in a shrug.</p><p>“I love you,” he says. “And you look happy. And that’s what I want for you more than anything.”</p><p>~</p><p>Bucky starts to tell Steve what he likes. Not that he didn’t like what they did before, but he has preferences. Now his body and mind are relearning how to want things, he’s finding more of them every day. </p><p>“Could you be on top of me?” he says when they’re making out one night.</p><p>They don’t do sex, not really. Steve says what they do still counts, even if it’s mainly hands and mouths, but Bucky doesn’t mind either way - as long as they’re both enjoying themselves. As long as Steve is happy. And Steve’s happy as long as Bucky is, so really it’s mutually beneficial. And so Steve gets on top of him, instead of lying next to him. He pins Bucky with his weight while they move together, or holds Bucky’s hands in one of his to take the lead on what they’re doing. It’s nice, Bucky feels, not to need to make decisions, not to worry about choosing the wrong thing. Steve doesn’t tell him to lie still because he doesn’t need to, Bucky’s calmer with each thing Steve does.</p><p>He asks for a hood after perhaps six months, when Steve sleeps on top of him, or squeezes him tight when he needs a hug. If Bucky’s had a bad day, Steve learns to stand behind him and cover his eyes, and if something goes wrong during a fight, Steve’s started to see when he needs to be pulled aside and put into a corner, or held with his head in Steve’s lap, face against Steve’s stomach. Shutting out the world becomes easier and so Bucky asks for a hood. </p><p>Steve brings home three, but the choice is obvious.</p><p>“This one,” he says, holding it in his hands. “This one.”</p><p>“You sure?” Steve asks, probably because Bucky hasn’t tried the other two, even though they tried five different types of earplug, and four different rope ties, and seven different types of gag, another four different sleep masks. </p><p>“Yeah,” Bucky says, because he is. “Hydra never gave me velvet.”</p><p>~</p><p>“If you need to stop,” Steve says, his voice low and calm, “at any point, just drop the ball. Okay?”</p><p>Bucky nods. There isn’t much else he can do at this point, and it took long enough to get them both here. </p><p>He kneels, his legs folded under him and tied so they’ll stay there. His hands are cinched at his back, and it wasn’t enough, so Steve leaned how to tie them together, how to make the rope go all the way up. </p><p>He learned how to cross Bucky’s body with rope and keep Bucky still and quiet. He learned because Bucky asked him to, because Bucky told him how. </p><p>Bucky closes his eyes before the blindfold goes on. He always did. When he didn’t have a choice in it, that was the only thing he could do, the only choice he could make. Now it’s force of habit. He closes his eyes before the world disappears.</p><p>The leather over his mouth has warmed to the temperature of his skin, so he barely feels it. Wouldn’t feel it at all if he weren’t so aware of everything around him. </p><p>Steve puts the earplugs in for him, pinching the foam pieces to make them small, carefully inserting them so that they can fill his ear canals. Bucky doesn’t hear the traffic, or the air-con, or the fridge. He can’t hear Steve. </p><p>He just hears his own heart, beating steadily. </p><p>The hood is last, thick and warm and it cuts off the air around him immediately. Gone is the air current moving on his face, gone is the brush of hair against the back of his neck. Gone is every input and every possible decision he could have to make. There’s nothing left except blackness and the knowledge that someone else is in charge of him now. He tried not to lean into it, not to love it, but there was a time when it was the best of any situation. Now, he knows he couldn’t be safer than he is right now. There’s nobody on the planet who could keep him safer than Steve, nobody on earth who cares more for him than Steve does. </p><p>He worries for a moment that he might remember things he doesn’t want to, </p><p>Steve’s hand settles warm against his shoulder, and then the other on the other side, and then the world is tilting about him and he doesn’t have to worry about staying upright. The bedclothes cradle him, the mattress is firm and broad because it’s Steve’s mattress, and the only thing he really feels is the tension in the ropes that bind him. Everything else drops away. </p><p>~</p><p>It takes a long while for Steve to grow used to it, to learn how useful something like this is.</p><p>It doesn’t work automatically all the time, it’s not like Bucky can’t function if someone turns out the lights. But, when Steve takes the light from him, when Steve whisks the world away and leaves Bucky floating in the void, that’s how he knows he’s lucky. That’s how he knows he’s loved. He holds tightly onto the ball in his palm and lets Steve decide what to do with him.</p><p>There’s a list of course, it’s not like Steve could do <i>anything</i> - that would be dangerous for both of them, for their health <i>and</i> their trust. Instead, Steve knows what to choose from and knows Bucky well enough to choose the right things. The greatest irony of the Winter Soldier, Bucky Barnes thinks, is not that he comes undone only when he’s bound too tightly to move, but that they could never tie him down. He was already bound to someone far greater than they could ever be.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>If you're interested in getting me to write something for you, head on over to <a href="https://justanotherstonyfan.tumblr.com">my tumblr!</a></p></blockquote></div></div>
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